Monday, June 22, 2009

We Don’t Need Obama’s Big-Bang Health-Care Plan

It looks like President Obama’s big-bang health-care reform is going down to defeat. This is good. But my question is why do we need it at all? According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?

There’s more. According the U.S. Census Bureau, we don’t have 47 million folks who are truly uninsured. When you take college kids plus those earning $75,000 or more who chose not to sign up, that removes roughly 20 million people. Then take out about 10 million more who are not U.S. citizens, and 11 million who are eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but have not signed up for some reason.

So that really leaves only 10 million to 15 million people who are truly long-term uninsured.

Yes, they need help. And yes, I would like to give it to them. But not with mandatory coverage, or new government-backed insurance plans, or massive tax increases. And certainly not with the Canadian-European-style nationalization that has always been the true goal of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

Instead, we can give the truly uninsured vouchers or debit cards that will allow for choice and coverage, and even health savings accounts for retirement wealth. According to expert Betsy McCaughey, instead of several trillion dollars and socialized medicine, this voucher approach would cost only about $25 billion a year.

But the Democratic agenda has never really been about just the uninsured. And it certainly hasn’t been about real cost-cutting or true market choice and competition. Nor has it been about tort/trial-lawyer reform. Instead, the Democratic agenda has always been a class-warfare, anti-business attack on private-sector doctors, hospitals, insurance firms, and drug companies. It’s all about control, knocking down their profits, and telling them what to do.

About Me

Larry Kudlow

Lawrence Kudlow is CNBC’s Senior Contributor. For many years, he was the host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report”. He is also the host of The Larry Kudlow Show, which broadcasts on Saturdays from 10am to 1pm ET on WABC Radio and is syndicated nationally by Cumulus Media. He is also a nationally syndicated columnist and a former Reagan economic advisor. CNBC's The Kudlow Report also airs on Sirius (ch.129) and XM (ch.127) weeknights at 7pm ET.